O tell me the truth about love

after Auden

O tell me the truth about love,
the sniggering innuendo,
the all-encompassing desire wrought
upon the aching flesh
and subsequently joked about
by those who've never had to love
or satisfy urges
in darkness and squalor.

O tell me the truth about love,
that seeks intoxicating drink,
replete with what can gratify
the heart until
its chambers bleed again.
The ironic and gay
shall dance across
the chambers of the bleeding heart.

O tell me the truth about love,
if it will come like God's mercies,
a terrible lightning shaft,
reducing all men's miseries
to tiny splinters in the raft.
Is it as queer as whispers in the dark,
as when, locked in, you feel a draught?
And can it fill the empty ark?